The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling (as Robert Galbraith)
★★★★★
It was a clever idea of J.K.Rowling's to publish this book in secret, under an assumed name. Because The Cuckoo's Calling is all about identity -- and specifically the way in which we mistake people's real identities, especially where the famous are concerned.
Of course, on one level it's blindingly obvious that it's a book about identity: it's a whodunnit, after all, a detective story in which we are supposed to keep … [Read more...]

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe
★★★★
There's a scene towards the end of Back to Blood when we finally get inside the secret studio of the elusive Russian artist Igor Drukovich. In public an arch-devotee of realism, Igor has hidden away in his studio a series of copies of modernist, surrealist, abstract and cubist masterpieces by the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Kandinksy and Braque -- the very artists he sneers at in public. But it turns out they are perfect forgeries Igor has been … [Read more...]

Final Mercy by Frank J Edwards
★★★★
There's something appealing about the idea of a madman being charge of a hospital and nobody realising it. That's the premise of Frank J Edwards' Final Mercy: everyone thinks Bryson Witner, the new dean of a once prestigious teaching hospital in rural New York that has fallen on hard times, is a breath of fresh air. But Dr Witner is seriously unhinged: he's killed his way to the top job and he's intent on killing anyone who threatens his grip … [Read more...]

The Cover-Up by Dana Griffin
★★★★
The Cover-Up is a thriller set around an air accident investigation. That's an inspired choice: while there are plenty of thrillers set upon hijacked or saboatged airliners, here the crash takes place right at the start, and the real action starts after an Omega Airlines 737 has gone off the end of the runway at La Guardia airport and all the survivors have been picked up, as investigators sit down to try to work out why a routine take-off went … [Read more...]

The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre
★★★★
The middle instalment of the 'Karla Trilogy' is very different from the two books that take place either side of it, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Smiley's People. In both of those the central character, George Smiley, is a retired outsider investigating the mistakes and betrayals of other men. In The Honourable Schoolboy, we get to see Smiley doing what he is supposedly best at, running an intelligence service. It means we get to see him … [Read more...]

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
★★★★★
Quite simply the best novel I have ever read. From the first page, with its astonishing evocation of a fog-bound London -- "Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners" -- Bleak House draws you into a world and … [Read more...]